Another misleading meme

This is a new meme making the rounds.  It bears exploration.  

 

In September of 1974, roughly one month following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, his successor in office, Gerald Ford did in fact issue a presidential pardon to former President Nixon.  It was a full and unconditional pardon for any and all crimes that Nixon might have committed during his tenure as president.

It was strongly criticized and most believe was the reason that President Ford failed in his 1976 bid to win reelection.  But it wasn't a crime to issue that pardon.  It wasn't a quid pro quo.  Was it the right decision?  Let's ask the late Edward "Ted" Kennedy who addressed this issue in 2001.  When he presented President Ford with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award; an honor given to a politician for "following his conscience in spite of the political cost," Senator Kennedy said,

"I'm honored to be here today with President Gerald R. Ford, the winner of this year's Profile in Courage Award, and Congressman John Lewis, the recipient of the Profile in Courage Lifetime Achievement Award.
"At a time of national turmoil, America was fortunate that it was Gerald Ford who took the helm of the storm-tossed ship of state. Unlike many of us at the time, President Ford recognized that the nation had to move forward, and could not do so if there was a continuing effort to prosecute former President Nixon. So President Ford made a courageous decision, one that historians now say cost him his office, and he pardoned Richard Nixon.
"I was one of those who spoke out against his action then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us. He eminently deserves this award, and we are proud of his achievement."

 It is also worth noting that after he left office, President Ford carried a copy of a portion of a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision in his wallet.  In the case of Burdick v United States, the court's decision made it clear that a pardon indicates a presumption of guilt and that the acceptance of that pardon is tantamount to an admission of guilt.

One last thought on pardons.  I have a much larger problem with the pardon by President Bill Clinton of Marc Rich, a man who donated $450,000 to the Clinton Presidential Library, $1,000,000 to the Democratic National Party, and another $100,000 to the U.S. Senate campaign of Hillary Clinton.  In a strangely ironic twist, it was a man named James Comey who investigated the pardoning of Marc Rich and found no wrongdoing.  Yes, that then-Republican James Comey is the same one who just allegedly violated the Hatch Act with his letter about a new email investigation.

* * *

The allegation that President Reagan sold arms to the Iranians and financed a secret war was investigated by Congress, and by the Tower Commission.  Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan knew about the arms sales.  It should be noted that because of the destruction of documents by the principals in this affair, there may indeed have been evidence that the President may have known about the arms sales.  But it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

That President Reagan was a proponent of the cause of the Contra revolutionaries is not in dispute.  What is in dispute is whether or not he knew of the actions of some of his senior advisors in funneling money from the sale of arms to Iran to fund that cause.  Again, there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the president was guilty of any criminal wrongdoing in the Iran-Contra scandal.

* * *

Video doesn't lie.  George H. W. Bush did say "read my lips, no new taxes."  But that wasn't a blood oath, it wasn't a legally-binding statement.  It was a campaign promise.  A promise made during a period of strong economic growth and prior to any sign a recession was on the horizon.  Even then, following passage of the Budget Enforcement Act in 1990, President Bush submitted a budget proposal to Congress that contained spending cuts and no tax increases.  But the Democratically controlled House rejected that spending plan.  So yes, he broke that campaign promise.

The comparison of a broken campaign promise to any allegation of criminal wrongdoing is not just a false equivalency, it is silly.  Instead, how about if we compare Bush's broken promise to other broken campaign promises made by future presidents?

Here is a partial list of the campaign promises made and then broken by President Obama:

Enact the Buffett Rule so secretaries pay tax at a lower rate than their bosses.
Tax carried interest as ordinary income (Trump made the same promise).
End income tax for seniors making less than $50,000 per year.
End no-bid contracts above $25,000.  I wrote about one such no-bid contract issued by the Obama Administration over four years ago.  Big donor's company gets no-bid contract and no one cares.
Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour, by 2011.
Cut the cost of the typical family's health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year.

This isn't intended as an indictment of President Obama in particular so much as it is to point out that politicians make promises during campaigns and many of those promises get broken.  So the "read my lips, no new taxes" broken promise doesn't belong in a discussion about the allegations involving Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server and whether or not she broke the law.  It's yet another utterly false equivalency.

* * *

Did President George W. Bush lie about the presence of WMDs?  Probably.  Almost certainly.  Was the Gulf War, version II the costliest war in U.S. history?  Not according to a 2015 piece in USA Today.  That dubious distinction belongs to World War II.  The U.S. spent over $4 trillion in fighting World War II.  In contrast the war on terror from 9/11 through the end of 2010 saw the U.S. spending less than $2 billion.  When you adjust the World War II spending amounts for inflation it becomes painfully obvious that calling the war on terror the costliest war ever is dishonest.

But Bush's lies rise to the level of being compared to Clinton's alleged transgressions. The meme gets a half-point for an accurate comparison but can't be awarded the full point due to the Trump-like hyperbole about the "costliest".

* * *

Valerie Plame's covert identity was revealed by a member of the Bush Administration but it has never been proven to have been done by Dick Cheney.  "Scooter" Libby did it and he was held to answer for it.  Held to answer because it could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty.  Something that FBI director James Comey said his agency could not do in the case of Hillary Clinton and the classified emails/use of a private email server.

Now let's get to the crux of the matter.  Hillary Clinton has admitted that she made a mistake in using a private email server.  Fair enough.  But what she has not done is to explain why she continued to do so after sending every single member of the State Department a cable instructing them NOT to use their private email accounts to conduct official State Department Business.  

That is where this meme ultimately fails.  Because none of the things that any of those Republicans did, or allegedly did was an instance where they ordered others not to do what they themselves are accused of doing.  This "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy is the absence of leadership.

Fortunately for Secretary Clinton she is the best of the two potential winners of the presidency by far, and the dangers of Donald Trump in the Oval Office are just too great to vote for anyone but Secretary Clinton.